Cultural Calisthenics: Writings on Race, Politics, and Theatre - Softcover

Brustein Harvard University, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566632668 ISBN 13: 9781566632669

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 1999

Synopsis

Robert Brustein's new book is not simply a collection of his theatre writings. It also functions as a precise barometer of contemporary society, measuring the pressures of our current cultural climate. Never one to shy away from controversy, Mr. Brustein includes in this new volume accounts of his celebrated Town Hall debate with August Wilson over the issue of segregated casting; his spirited defense of the national Endowment for the Arts against its enemies on the political right; his eloquent response to the impact of political correctness on the theatre and the university; and his forthright criticism of what he calls "coercive philanthropy"―the tendency of funding agencies to impose their own political and social agendas on artistic institutions. He closes with deft portraits of some of the people he believes have enhanced the art of the theatre he has written about for more than forty years, including Chekhov, Brecht, Sam Shepard, Orson Welles, Eugene Ionesco, Stella Adler, Joe Papp, and William Shakespeare. Cultural Calisthenics shows Mr. Brustein at his best: an outstanding critic of drama and a prescient observer of our times.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Brustein, theatre critic for the New Republic and is the author of Dumbocracy in America, Reimagining American Theatre, The Theatre of Revolt, and The Siege of the Arts. He is also founder and artistic director of the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University.

From Booklist

Once one of the most vocal proponents of risky, status quo^-shaking theater in such quintessential 1960s-era writings as those in The Theatre of Revolt (1964) and Making Scenes (1981), Brustein in recent years has fought a rearguard action against multiculturalism and those who would use theater to advance social and political causes. Yet he is no cultural conservative of the Hilton Kramer^-John Simon stamp and in many ways remains an old-style Kennedy-Johnson liberal. You never really know which side of an issue he will land on, which drives his more doctrinaire detractors crazy--and makes him fascinating. In this collection of witty, tightly written essays, most dated 1996 and 1997, Brustein gleefully gores sacred cows left and right, chiding the right for stifling the National Endowment for the Arts and the left for its superstitious belief in the power of art to affect social change. The first third of the book contains Brustein's thoughts on race and politics and the ongoing culture war, in particular Brustein's feud with August Wilson regarding white and black theaters, which culminated in a public debate in early 1997. The rest of the book contains trenchant, exceptionally well-written theater reviews and miscellaneous writings on theater, notably a eulogy of the Group Theatre founder, Stella Adler. Jack Helbig

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1566632668
• ISBN 13: 9781566632669
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304